New Sounds of Learning: Composing music for young musicians
is a multi-site, multi-year research project partnered with the Canadian Music
Centre and the Ottawa Catholic School Board to commission composers to compose
new music for students in school ensembles and private studios and to examine
the parameters of educational music. This article outlines findings on the
analysis and interpretation of reflective journals undertaken by professional
composers during the composing of new string music for students enrolled in
school music programs and private studios.

A Personal Journey

In the early
stages of my career when I was heavily involved in teaching and administering
music programs, I was often frustrated by the lack of available Canadian
repertoire for school ensembles.1 During my years as a representative of the
faculties of education on the Ontario Regional Council of the Canadian Music
Centre (CMC),2 I became aware of the efforts of the organization to promote
Canadian music in education across the country. Guidelists of Canadian music
appropriate for young musicians were produced under the auspices of the John
Adaskin Project (e.g., MacInnes, 1991; Shand, 1993, Stubley, 1990, Walter,
1994). Composers created new music for schools in Creating Music in the
Classroom (Washburn, 1960), teaching resources were disseminated in the Composter
Project (CMC, 1992), and student compositions were critiqued by
professional composers in Composer in Electronic Residence (Barwin,
1998). .

In my work with
the CMC, I was involved in applications for commissioning funds for new music
for young musicians and in direct contact with professional composers. It was
brought to my attention on several occasions that many composers were
unfamiliar with the parameters of educational music. Composers are trained to
compose at ever-increasing levels of complexity (Hatrik, 2002; Terauds, 2011) and
seldom have the opportunity to write for young musicians. Moreover, there are
few commissions available for educational music composition (Van Eyk, 2011). In
studies of programs in faculties of music across Ontario with a colleague at
Wilfrid University, Waterloo, Ontario, we found that composers are not trained
to compose for

1 This narrative refers to the
experiences of the lead author.

2 The Canadian Music is a
not-for-profit association of professional composers with a national office in
Toronto, Ontario and five regional offices: Atlantic, Quebec, Ontario,
Prairies, and British Columbia

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educational
purposes. Moreover, there is very limited Canadian repertoire studied and
performed in post-secondary institutions (Andrews & Carruthers, 2004;
Carruthers, 2000). The situation is similar in school-based music programs
where American film music and Western-European transcriptions for concert band
and vocal ensembles dominate the curriculum (Bartel, Dolloff, & Shand 1999;
Shand & Bartel, 1998; Varahidis, 2012). These three critical issues –
composers‟ lack of training in educational music, the limited Canadian
repertoire in education, and the lack of commissions for new music for young
musicians – prompted me to collaborate with CMC staff to seek out commissioning
funds and include a research component to develop an in-depth understanding of
educational music composition.

Commencing in 2000 and in the following
years, several educational commissions were initiated for CMC composers.
Initially, the Canada Council for the Arts in collaboration with provincial
arts agencies commissioned ninety-eight new educational works in a project
entitled New Music for Young Musicians (NMFYM). The research component
focused on evaluating the effectiveness of the commissioning program with
Ontario and Atlantic Regional composers involved in NMFYM. In the
research, it was found that composers employ specific compositional techniques
to reinforce different types of music learning, and prior experiences teaching
young people are important for creating educational music appropriate for them
(Andrews, 2004a). The adoption of a flexible form allows a composer to adapt
more easily to students‟ needs, and blending atonal and tonal idioms challenges
students and retains their attention (Andrews, 2007). Rehearsing new works on-site
in classrooms and studios enables composers to effectively assess students‟
technical proficiency and ensure an appropriate interpretation of a new work
(Andrews, 2006). Compositional techniques, such as short pulsating rhythms to
refine motor responses and equality of parts to maintain interest, can impact
positively on students‟ musical skill development (Andrews, 2009).

The Norman
Burgess Memorial Fund3 built on the work of NMFYM and commissioned
three new string works for educational purposes commencing in 2005 (CMC, 2004).
In the 2007-2008 school year, the Ontario Arts Foundation with funds from the
Ontario Ministry of Education and Ministry of Culture collaborated with the Norman
Burgess Memorial Fund to commission eight new string works for NMFYM,
and the Ottawa Catholic Board also commissioned eight new wind works (Andrews,
2012; Palmer, 2010; Van Eyk, 2010). These works were commissioned over the
school years 2007-2008 through to 2010-2011 (4 per year alternating string and
wind compositions). The research component, entitled New Sounds of Learning:
Composing for Young Musicians, focused on examining the parameters of
educational music, and it was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council (SSHRC).4 To date, this study has found that the commissions
enabled composers to create new music that was suitable for the Canadian
context and broadened their compositional skills. Among the composers, there
was a concern about the poor musical quality and limited pedagogical value of
much educational music. They also expressed concern about limited amount of
Canadian

3 Norman Burgess was
a former Chair of the Ontario Regional Council. On his passing, the estate
donated funds to the CMC to commission and premiere new string works for young
musicians.

4 Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council (SSHCRC) Grant No. 210-2006-2529.

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repertoire
and the importance of on-site contact with students when composing for them.
None of the composers had any compositional training in composing for young
musicians. For those composing string works, the key factors were the students‟
abilities, the pedagogical dimension, and musical quality: they pursed an
educational commission to raise students‟ awareness of contemporary musical
techniques and to create new music in areas where they is limited repertoire
(Andrews, 2013). The key factors for those composing for winds were technical
proficiency, musical challenge, and enjoyment: they emphasized the importance
of avoiding undue complexity and creating music appropriate to the students‟
needs (Andrews & Giesbrecht, 2013). The research team also discovered that
there is limited agreement by publishers on the levels of difficulty of
instrumental ensemble pieces that are commercially available. Consequently, a
Music Complexity Chart (MC²) was developed to identify the characteristics of
each level and of the grades within them (Appendix I) (Andrews, 2011). This
article focuses on the findings of reflective journals which were undertaken by
composers commissioned to compose new string works for young musicians during
New Sounds of Learning: Composing for Young Musicians (a.k.a. New Sounds of
Learning Project).

Wallas (1926) speculated that creativity
occurs in four stages - productive mood, incubation, illumination, and
verification. Graf (1947) applied these stages to music composition and
designated them as productive mood (preparation), musical conception
(incubation), sketching (illumination), and composition (verification). Bennett
(1976) elaborated on Graf's categories but shifted the focus from feelings
(productive mood) and thoughts (musical conception) to the writing process
itself (i.e., sketches and drafts). He suggested that composing involves a
six-stage process of i) discovering a germinal idea, ii) a brief sketch, iii)
creation of a first draft, iv) elaboration and refinement of a first draft, v)
a final draft, and vi) its revisions. Research also suggests that composers
make both conscious and unconscious decisions in their work (Sloboda, 1988),
and they may not follow the stages in sequence but oscillate between them
(Hung, 1998). Composers may also employ various strategies in conjunction with
the stages (Fulmer, 1995). Sloboda (1985) proposed a broad two-stage approach:
(1) the inspirational stage and (2) the execution stage. Roozendaal (1993)
proposed that the process of music composition involved: (1) planning; (2) the
development of large-scale concepts; (3) noting coherence between parts; and
(4) working on musical units. For Roozendaal, problem-solving was seen as
recursive as opposed to sequential. Recent models of music composition have
exhibited similarities among the proposed compositional stages. For example,
Christiansen (1993) stated that the stages of composition consisted of
exploration, organization, and polishing; and Freed-Grarrod (1999) proposed
that the compositional stages included exploring, selecting,
performance/sharing, and evaluation/assessment. Studies by Collins (2005,
2007), Collins and Dunn (2011), and McAdams (2004) examined the compositional
process by developing longitudinal multi-year studies that were conducted in
the composer‟s naturalistic settings and that used multiple sources of data
collection including, but not limited to, interviews and communications between
participants and researchers, video recording, and composer‟s reflective
commentaries (e.g., journal entries). Katz and Gardner (2012) proposed “within
domain” and “beyond domain” approaches to music composition. The former focuses
on the

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details of a
composition such as note values, phrasing and dynamics. In contrast, the latter
is concerned with the overall conceptual framework for the piece and filling in
the form with the details of the composition. In the study outlined in this
article, a broad-based model was adopted consisting of three stages:
conceptualizing, writing, and refining (Andrews, 2012). Within each stage,
there was a particular focus: the musical abilities of the students, the
current knowledge and skills of the performers, and the organization of the
piece (conceptualization); the development of musical ideas, the compositional
strategies implemented to promote music learning, and the instructional
obstacles that the composers encountered (writing); and problems that arose,
how they were resolved, and any further adjustments to their compositions
(refining).

Methodology

In the New
Sounds of Learning Project, Integrated Inquiry was employed throughout the
study. This approach to research solicits multiple perspectives on the object
of study through data collected from the same protocol from different time
periods or different groups of participants, or alternately the use of different
research protocols, qualitative and/or quantitative (Andrews, 2008). The four
dimensions of creativity - place, process, product, and person
– were employed as the theoretical framework for the study overall (Woodman
& Schoenfeldt, 1989; Amabile & Tighe, 1993), and different protocols
implemented for each dimension; that is, questionnaire, reflective journal,
compositional analysis, and interview, respectively. More specifically for
music composition, these dimensions refer to the pre-requisites for composing
(training and experience of the composer, context of the composition),
compositional process (techniques and strategies implemented by the
composers, sequencing of musical material), the musical piece (features,
style, and impact of a composition on musical development), and person (characteristics,
pre-dispositions and motivation of the composer) (Andrews, 2004b).

Although compositional training and experience are important
aspects of a composer‟s career (refer to Andrews, 2013; Andrews & Giesbrecht,
2013), how composers compose an educational work has not been determined. For
this reason, this phase of the New Sounds of Learning Project focused on the compositional
process of music composition for strings. The key question of this phase of
the study was:

What
compositional strategies are employed when composing educational music for
strings?

Participants

Eight composers affiliated with the Canadian Music Centre
were asked to reflect and comment on the process of composing string music for
young musicians, and seven of them agreed to participate in this component of
the New Sounds of Learning Project.5 The composers were

5 Eight composers composing music
for winds also completed reflective journals and the research is reported
elsewhere (Andrews & Giesbrecht, 2014).

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asked to comment
on conceptualization, writing, and refinement of their compositions for educational
ensembles. The guiding questions within the reflective journals were selected
from those emerging from prior studies on composing educational music (Andrews,
2004c, 2007, 2009), and they were refined in collaboration with composers,
music educators, and music industry representatives who were members of the
Ontario Region of the CMC (refer to Appendix II).

Figure 1:
Compositional Process

Conceptualizing

The composers collaborated with their associate teachers,
attended rehearsals and reviewed existing musical repertoire to better grasp
the level of the students‟ abilities. As one composer commented: “I consulted
[the] string conductor … attend[ed] a couple of rehearsals … [and] got
acquainted with the general playing level [of the students].”

The commissioned
string compositions were written for a range of musical abilities, grade, and
difficulty levels using the Music Complexity Chart (MC²) (refer to Appendix I).
The Chart identifies the characteristics of levels of difficulty in educational
music, and it assists composers compose for young musicians, teachers select
appropriate music for their students, and publishers accurately label the
scores that they bring to market (Andrews, 2011). Students demonstrated basic
but varying proficiency on their instruments. The composers accommodated to
this situation by composing pieces with a degree of flexibility. For example,
one composer created a four-part modular piece6 in which a particular set of
parts can be played in a

6 Modular parts refers to the
practice of writing the same piece at different levels of difficulty. For
example, Christopher Mayo composed a set of string parts were written at levels
A – D with A being the most difficult and D the least difficult. Students would
learn the D set and gradually progress to the A set of parts (refer to Appendix
III).

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performance
(refer to Appendix III). He explained: “By working with a full range of musical
abilities, I felt that I was not in any way limited musically, as any ideas which
I had which were inappropriate for a certain skill level could simply be moved
up to a more advanced part.”

The composers created music that
developed students‟ musical skills and maintained interest. They often went
beyond developing technical ability and further encouraged students to “use
their creative side and challenge them to start thinking of music and musical
practices in a novel and unusual way.” They introduced improvisation into their
compositions and enabled students to create their own interpretation of various
passages. They sequenced a modular piece with increasing levels of difficulty
so that students could improve their skills by learning a higher level part.
Further, they introduced singing and playing simultaneously to develop the
students‟ listening skills.

The composers
commented on both the internal structure and overall form of their pieces. Most
of the internal structural decisions involved notational and stylistic choices
to ensure that the work was challenging yet accessible to the students. For example,
a composer commented: “I focus […] on the particular area which is the main
focus of a particular movement and allow some other aspects of the music to be
simpler.” The piece mentioned previously employed varying levels of difficulty
which could be played together or separately. When organizing their
compositions overall, composers selected predominantly variation and
three-movement forms “that could be practiced/performed either independently or
(preferably) as a set.”

Writing

Composers found
it challenging to articulate the origins of their musical ideas. Their comments
indicate that they were obtained from two major sources: improvisation or skill
development. Several composers improvised and played music on their own
instruments to generate ideas. Other composers generated their musical ideas by
focusing on the development of the students‟ musical skills. As a composer
commented: “Technical considerations come, and then specifically musical ideas
are created to exploit these technical considerations.” Only one composer
expressed an alternate view and explained that it is not the musical idea per
se but its development that is most significant aspect of composition: “To
me […] what is important is how I build around ANY idea that ended up on the page.”

The composers highlighted the pedagogical and technical
aspects of their pieces “that the technique had to be tempered for young
musicians.” The composers identified certain specific compositional strategies
such as:

-featuring the inner parts to develop the players‟ performance
skills

-repeating soft passages to develop dynamic control

-using imitation to develop listening skills

-repeating figures with variety to maintain interest

-integrating novel patterns into the texture to develop
rhythmic skill

-adopting instrument-specific techniques to create effects
(e.g., using high string notes to create an ethereal sound)

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The obstacles
experienced by the composers included notational issues, maintaining interest
in each of the parts, and avoiding complexity as was there inclination. They
found it very difficult not to exceed the technical abilities of the students;
for example: “I occasionally compose something that seems too difficult and
then I have to revise my spontaneous idea into a simpler version.” In order to
overcome undue complexity, the composers worked with their associate teachers
to focus on „playability.‟

Refining

Composers found
that most of the problematic issues with their pieces were technical; for
example, one composer noted that dynamics were a problem as “students don‟t
like to play softly.” Others noted that the students experienced problems with
unfamiliar rhythms. In all cases, the associate teachers played a critical role
in assisting the composers to address the problems that emerged during the
rehearsals. For example, one composer found that some of the notes in his piece
were too high for the some of the students to play so he added alternate easier
ones. Another composer added a piano part to her string work because a student
pianist very much wanted to perform with the string orchestra. Still another
composer explained how he altered a piece to avoid monotony: “I decided to add
parallel minor sevenths to full moon lullaby on the D string today: it makes it
harder to play, but it rids the piece of monotone open strings, and focuses on
left hand development.”

Before the final
versions of the scores were completed, the composers made final refinements.
This was undertaken in collaboration with the associate teachers: the ultimate
goal was to achieve balance; that is, to create music that is “pedagogically
sound and aesthetically sound.” Overall, the composers had a positive
experience writing their respective compositions. One of them summarized the
process by stating: “The journey is not easy but it is very rewarding.”

Discussion

The art of
composition is a complex activity involving musical invention, improvisation,
generation, composition, arranging, and performance (Hargreaves, Miell, &
MacDonald, 2004). Composers must be responsive to the performers’ abilities,
especially when they are young musicians. The purpose of the reflective
journals was to develop an in-depth understanding of the compositional
strategies that composers utilized as they composed new music for young people.
Tracking the thought of “composers at work is one way to glean more
understanding of the compositional process and a fuller understanding”
(Kennedy, 1999, p. 157). In their journals the composers provided evidence of
their attempts to modify their compositions to accommodate the students‟
technical abilities, such as the use of repetition to reinforce learning and
rhythmic variety to maintain interest, which is essential to composing
effective educational music (Andrews, 2009; Colgrass, 2004). The composers did
not indicate that inspiration played a significant part in their works which
has been identified as a factor in music composition (Bahle,

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1936;
Graf, 1947; Bennett, 1976; Sloboda, 1985). They learned to play repertoire
themselves on the students‟ instruments to familiarize themselves with their
unique characteristics, and they organized their compositions in basic forms,
such as binary, ternary, and variation, to facilitate learning. At the same
time, composers were equally concerned about challenging and maintaining
student interest, a key concern expressed in the literature (Campouse 2002,
2004, 2007; Colgrass, 2004; Darling, 2007; Hatrik, 2002). This was accomplished
by reframing the relationship of pedagogy and music composition by integrating
into their compositions improvisation, variable interpretation, modular parts,
and singing and playing simultaneously. Although such techniques can be risky
as students are unfamiliar with them (Colgrass, 2004), such reframing of
educational music is essential if new compositions for young musicians are to
enhance their musical development, challenge and maintain interest, and
invigorate the repertoire of schools, conservatories, and post-secondary institutions.

Concluding Comments

In 2010, the
Ontario Trillium Foundation commissioned another fifteen compositions for young
musicians over a three-year period for NMFYM, and the research
component, entitled Sound Connections: Composing Educational Music, focused
on the relationship of compositional techniques to musical skill development.
Commencing in 2012, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board began
commissioning another eighteen wind works over three-years supported by SSHRC.
The research component, entitled Making Music: Composing with Young
Musicians, focuses on the co-creation of new music by composers in
collaboration with students and their teachers. This brings the total number
for all commissions to date since 2000 to a total of one hundred and fifty new
Canadian works for young musicians. 7It is anticipated
that significant findings will result that will assist composers to compose
educational music more effectively and increase Canadian repertoire for school
ensembles and private studio instruction.

7 98 commissions funded by the Millennium Fund of the Canada
Council for the Arts and provincial arts agencies, 3 by the Norman Burgess
Memorial Fund, 8 by the Ontario Arts Foundation, 8 by the Ottawa Catholic
School Board, 15 by the Trillium Foundation, and 18 by the Ottawa-Carleton
District School Board = 150 new Canadian educational works.

Andrews, B. W.
(2004a). Conceptualizing new music for young musicians. In L. Bartel (Ed.), Questioning
the music education paradigm (pp. 146-160). Research to Practice series,
Vol. 2. Waterloo, ON: Canadian Music Educators Association.

Andrews, B. W. (2004b).
Composing music in the classroom: The missing link in music instruction. The
Recorder, 46 (3), 12-19. 4.

Andrews, B. W. (2004c).
How composers compose: In search of the questions. Research and Issues in
Music Education, 2 (1), www.stthomas.edu/rimeonline.

Andrews, B. W. (2006).
How composers compose new music for young musicians: Refining the process. In
M. Mans & B. H. Leung (Eds.), Music in schools for all children: From
research to effective practice (pp. 185-193). Proceedings of the 14th Music
in Schools and Teacher Education Commission (MISTEC), International Society for
Music Education. Granada, Spain: University of Granada Press.

Andrews, B. W. (2009).
Secrets of the Pied Piper: Composing music for young musicians. Research
Perspectives in Music Education, 13, 6-14.

Andrews, B. W. (2011).
The Music Complexity Chart (MC²): Identifying the characteristics of levels of
difficulty in educational music. In B. Bolden & M. Kennedy, Widening the
boundaries of music education (pp. 109-135). Victoria, BC: University of
Victoria.

Andrews, B. W. (2012).
New Sounds of Learning: Investigating the parameters of educational music. International
Journal of Arts and Humanities, 1 (6), 118-224.

Andrews, B. W. (2013).
Composing educational music for strings in a Canadian context: Composer
perspectives. Canadian Music Educator, 55 (5), 10-17.

Andrews, B. W., &
Carruthers. (2004). Needle in a haystack: Canadian music in post-secondary
curricula. In P. M. Shand (Ed.), Music education entering the 21st century (pp.
75-83). Proceedings of the 13th Music in Schools and Teacher Education (MISTEC)
Seminar, Malmo, Sweden. Nedlands, Western Australia: International Society for
Music Education.

Freed-Garrod, J. (1999). Assessment in
the arts: Elementary-aged students as qualitative assessors of their own and
peers‟ musical compositions. Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music
Education, 139, 50–63.

Kennedy, M. A. (1999). Where does the
music come from? A comparison case-study of the compositional processes of a
high school and a collegiate composer. British Journal of Music Education,
16 (2), 157–177.

N.
B. A higher grade is assigned when most of the characteristics of the musical
elements are more complex within a level. When a few characteristics are more
complex, then a .5 indicator may be warranted (e.g., 1.5). Outliers may be
ignored if they are minor.

The reflective journal focuses on the process of composing
new music for young musicians on solving instructional problems. You are asked
to notate your thoughts and feelings throughout three stages of this process;
that is, conceptualizing, writing and refining a new musical
work. The journal may be undertaken during each stage or at the end of a
particular stage.

Please provide a date for each entry, and include any
comments and suggestions provided by the assigned teacher. The guiding
questions are intended to assist you but should not limit the range of your
responses.

Conceptualizing

Guiding Questions:

What is the overall level of musical ability? What are the
strengths and limitations? (Refer to MC² provided.)

What musical skills and knowledge are currently being
developed? How do I reinforce this learning?

How do I organize my composition to build on current musical
abilities and extend them?

Writing

Where do I obtain the musical ideas? How do I develop them?

What compositional strategies do I employ to reinforce
learning?

What compositional obstacles am I encountering? How do I
overcome them?

Refining

What performance problems occur during the rehearsals?

What adjustments do I make to resolve these problems?

What other refinements do I undertake to improve the
composition?

Thank you for your contribution to the New Sounds of Learning
Project.